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Early Childhood Intervention Australia welcomes the new national guidelines for autism assessment and diagnosis

Early Childhood Intervention Australia (ECIA) applauds the announcement by the Coalition Government earlier today of a new national standard for assessment and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which will improve diagnostic consistency across Australia.

ECIA CEO, Yvonne Keane, today welcomed the release of the national guideline, developed by the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC) in consultation with more than 1000 autistic adults, family members, clinicians and policy makers, and which was funded by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA).

Ms Keane said that "The development and implementation of a consistent, national guideline for ASD diagnosis will provide families of people undergoing assessment with greater clarity as to how Autism is diagnosed."

"In particular, ECIA is pleased that the guideline has been created with sufficient flexibility to apply to the assessment of a child, as well as adults - providing families of children who are being assessed with greater peace of mind." Ms Keane said.

ECIA is the peak national organisation promoting the interests of service providers to young children, aged 0 to 6, with developmental delay or disability, their families and communities.

According to the latest National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) data, there are 22,932 children age 0-6 with an approved NDIS plan. Approximately 60 percent of these children have autism as a primary disability.

Ms Keane said the guideline released today should complement the National Guidelines for Best Practice in Early Childhood Intervention that ECIA designed and developed for the NDIA, to help to deliver greater outcomes for children under the NDIS.

"The autism assessment and diagnosis guideline released today is a step-by-step, evidenced-based, best practice tool for health professionals who are conducting an autism assessment."

"It aims to provide a benchmark diagnostic standard, and importantly provides key information helpful when accessing supports. Accessing best-practice early childhood intervention supports as quickly and fluidly as possible is critical to the outcomes for children aged 0 to 6."

"ECIA looks forward to working with the NDIA to support the implementation of the autism assessment and diagnosis guidelines in the early childhood intervention sector." Ms Keane said.

Related

Parliament of Australia has assented to the legislative framework and rules establishing the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. Several pieces of legislation were elected. We will address two in particular:

The Provider Registration and Practice Standards Rules which set out the requirements for provider registration and the NDIS Code of Conduct which set the minimum expectations, behaviour and culture of NDIS providers and persons employed or otherwise engaged by NDIS providers, and empowers consumers in relation to their rights. Click here to read the Code of Conduct Rules 2018.

The ECIA NSW/ACT Innovation in Family Centred Practice (IFCP) Grant opened on Tuesday 13th of March 2018. Members of ECIA NSW/ACT providing Early Childhood Early Intervention (ECEI) services in NSW were able to apply. The closing date for applications was Monday 9th of April 2018. The IFCP Grant received an overwhelming response from the sector with a total of 18 applications received from early childhood services across NSW. There was an excellent spread of large and small organisations from metropolitan, rural, regional and remote areas of the state, and there were many excellent applications, which made the job of the assessment panel particularly challenging!